CTIA Keynote Intro Strikes a Sour Note

His hirsuteness thought intel CEO Craig Barrett seemed a bit grumpy when he took the stage as a keynote speaker

His hirsuteness thought intel CEO Craig Barrett seemed a bit grumpy when he took the stage as a keynote speaker at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas last week. Barretts mood was most likely due to the introduction he received from CTIA CEO Tom Wheeler. The obviously tone-deaf Wheeler introduced Barrett by saying anyone who watches television "recognizes these three notes" associated with the "Intel Inside" brand. He then proceeded to hum the three notes anyone who watches television knows as NBCs station ID song.
"There are four notes, not three notes," grumbled the usually upbeat Barrett when he got on stage. Wheeler then referred to Barrett as "Mr. Four-Noter," but Spencer had already tuned him out. The curious Katt spent the rest of the keynote eavesdropping on the group next to him, who were discussing a rumor that Hewlett-Packard may be introducing a Palm-branded device sometime in the near future.

Novell executives were quite peeved at Microsoft last week, as the Redmond software company once again stole much of the thunder and media attention from Novells annual BrainShare conference. With little notice, Microsoft invited a "select" group of media to its Redmond campus for a "major .Net announcement" on Monday. The gathering turned out to be an info session about the companys HailStorm Web services initiative. Coincidentally, this just happened to be the same day that Novells BrainShare conference was starting in Salt Lake City. This move resulted in a number of press folks forgoing BrainShare and hustling up to Redmond instead.

An irate Novell exec in Provo told the Kitty that he was tired of Microsofts adolescent behavior and wished that it would grow up and act more like a responsible corporate entity. In a bitter e-mail sent to an eWeek reporter last week and viewed by His Hirsuteness, a member of Novells PR team moaned that it "looks like MS is at it again. As you may or may not be aware, every year just before Novells BrainShare, the Redmond company launches what some have called predatory marketing as they announce some vague, wonderful, save-the-world technology that just happens to have Novell in the cross hairs."
Speaking of Redmond, the Kitty heard from a pal that Internet Explorer 6 for Windows 2000 has an indicator in the status bar that warns when the Web site being viewed doesnt carry a privacy policy. Interestingly, another tipster wrote to say that IE 6 sends up a privacy policy red flag whenever users view the hotmail.com Web site. "Me-ouch," moaned the Mouser.
In his March 5 column, the Kitty reported that the rumor in Austin these days is that Tivoli may lose its name in a move to complete the IBM-ization of the company. Now a friend of the Furball claims that in the next month or so you may no longer be able to e-mail people at Tivoli using tivoli.com. E-mail addresses for the enterprise management software group might soon be officially changing to IBM.com, according to the tattler.
The tipster also tells Spencer that Tivoli no longer has its own direct sales forceits products are now sold by IBMs sales force. "It seems the once fiercely independent Tivoli may now be fiercely dependent on IBM," mused the Mouser.